8 billion people vs. 3000 billionaires: Who would win?
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Elaborate and explain
Don't worry, the entire system is collapsing from mismanagement.
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The same issues arise whenever billionaires pass from old age or sickness. The world will be fine.
I have no doubt the world will be fine, but the hypothetical we're discussing isn't just one or two rich bastards knocking off a year with their legal estate already taken care of in a will...we're suggesting more direct action assisting their departure en masse - which isn't going to happen without a lot of other upheaval causing all kinds of economic turmoil that we're ignoring for the sake of this argument.
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Nationalize the assets
Pretty simple and effective.
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Ok, let’s look at this…
IF billionaires were removed from the picture, what would be the result?
There would be investment assets in various holding entities that would then be what, up for grabs? Sold off? Put in probate? Trillions in stock alone would suddenly be ownerless. How would that affect the market and the regular person’s investments?
Multiple BoD positions and CEO positions opening up. How would those be compensated? Just make more people rich?
Material possessions originally worth absurd sums now up for grabs to nobody who could realistically afford to use or maintain them (yachts, palatial homes, etc). Manufacturers of luxury goods would vanish (stupidly expensive watches, clothes, cars).
How would you prevent some other greedy, power-hungry f_cks from taking up the reins and putting us right back where we started? There is no point in civilization’s history where greedy f_cks haven’t existed, so how do you prevent their grubby fingers from tipping the scales right back in favor of piling all the money and power in their corner?
What are the unintended consequences?
(This is NOT an argument implying we should keep billionaires, just asking realistically and pragmatically what the result would be should they no longer exist)
wrote last edited by [email protected]The implication that they would all be killed or completely stripped of assets is the problem you’re trying to solve, however, that doesn’t have to be the action taken. Perhaps instead, the 8 billion people of the world decide to enact a society that insists that such accumulation of wealth is obscene and should be curtailed. Perhaps systems could be introduced to make the wealthy more accurately contribute to the society they profit off.
Billionaires become billionaires through exploitation. Exploitation of workers, financial systems, and political power for personal gain. Make them pay for all these things.
Pay for education of the people they use to build their companies. Pay for the healthcare of the entire population, which they degrade with their business practices. Pay for the infrastructure that enables them to do business. The roads, the safety nets, the national parks, the air quality, the water supply, the land they use. Make them pay to replace and repair, fully, any damage their business causes. Polute the stream, pay to fix it. Dig the ground for ore, repair the ground so it can be used again. Make them replace what they take from society for little or no cost because their goods are only affordable because they do not reflect the true cost of production. Make their businesses pay for all these things, and the cost of production will rise to include the true cost of production. At the moment, the shortfall is paid for by we, the people, which enables them to become billionaires. Exploitation.
We don’t have to kill anyone, or strip anyone of all their assets in some revolutionary action. We just have to make them pay the true cost of their exploitation.
Tax the rich. Use those taxes to repay their exploitation. Increase the cost of doing business to include the cost of repairing the impact.
People can still become very wealthy. But society will also become much stronger through the use of the extra revenue to benefit all.
To make this happen will take a revolution, but it doesn’t need to include guillotines, it just needs people to become aware. Sadly, the politicians and media are also owned by the billionaires, making the final step of collective uprising extremely difficult. But humans have done it many times before in the face of adversity, perhaps it can happen again.
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Billionaires, because we are too dumb to not fall for their tricks
But AI isn’t. They’re creating their own downfall as we speak
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Elaborate and explain
Cash me outside
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The problem with your comment is that it is boring. It provides no insight, proposes no causitive mechanisms. Of course, we could follow up and ask you "why?", in order to understand your reasoning, and therefore have an interesting discussion. And in fact, we are so certain that what we actually care about is the reasoning behind the answer, that we may as well ask why in advance.
Almost as if we would like you to... hmm... there are two words...
The problem with your comment is that it is boring.
Your problem with my comment is that you find or boring.
It provides no insight
Your problem is that you can't find any insight.
Of course, we could follow up and ask you "why?", in order to understand your reasoning
No, because my answer would be "because".
And in fact, we are so certain that what we actually care about is the reasoning behind the answer, that we may as well ask why in advance.
First off, what are you even trying say? Secondly, who are "we"? You and every single Lemmy user? You and the rest of the world?
Almost as if we would like you to... hmm... there are two words...
Lol, let me help you out since you are seemingly in a tough position. I'll block you and you'll experience the same effect as if I "hmm... there are two words..."
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The billionaires. There are many reasons, but my favorite is the Matthew effect.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Matthew effect.
For anyone wondering, the effect describes the uncanny ability for rich people to put on red outfits and act like blind devils whilst bending the law in their favor as they bask in their own self-proclaimed peity
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Elaborate and explain
With modern drones and AI tech?
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Ok, let’s look at this…
IF billionaires were removed from the picture, what would be the result?
There would be investment assets in various holding entities that would then be what, up for grabs? Sold off? Put in probate? Trillions in stock alone would suddenly be ownerless. How would that affect the market and the regular person’s investments?
Multiple BoD positions and CEO positions opening up. How would those be compensated? Just make more people rich?
Material possessions originally worth absurd sums now up for grabs to nobody who could realistically afford to use or maintain them (yachts, palatial homes, etc). Manufacturers of luxury goods would vanish (stupidly expensive watches, clothes, cars).
How would you prevent some other greedy, power-hungry f_cks from taking up the reins and putting us right back where we started? There is no point in civilization’s history where greedy f_cks haven’t existed, so how do you prevent their grubby fingers from tipping the scales right back in favor of piling all the money and power in their corner?
What are the unintended consequences?
(This is NOT an argument implying we should keep billionaires, just asking realistically and pragmatically what the result would be should they no longer exist)
The correct answer is to redistribute their wealth.
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Elaborate and explain
Over 1 million Russians killed and how many tens of thousands in Gaza. 3000 would be quite easy compared to the innocent.
Yes markets would be in shit but so what, take their wealth and distribute it. The entire financial system is made out of thin air now, everyone will be all worried to justify why not to do it but we need to do it for our civilization to grow beyond having the Poor's do all the work for the greedy pigs.
The entire system needs to change and they won't go easy, it will be tough and bloody.
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like how I sent you a list of economic theories that don't involve money
And I responded by pointing out that all those systems which could be implemented today reduce to barter, central planning, incentiveless systems that result in social loafing, or reinventing money with extra steps (e.g. energy certificates, local currencies, etc.). The others require some significant material change to function (e.g. near universal automation).
The people who thought that humans could fly went to work inventing things to make it true
The vast majority of them invented things that did not make it true, and many of them died testing those inventions. I'm not saying we can't develop a moneyless society, but I don't think that's something you can flippantly say we have "the ability" to do, when our current state of development is more like Icarus than the Wright Brothers.
I would rather those logistics be discussed in a time and place with people that were positioned to make it happen.
That's exactly the source of my disagreement. Trivializing the work left to be done does nothing but encourage people to jump off buildings en masse with cardboard wings.
But yes, I do believe that money is the biggest problem. I think it leads to more corruption than most other frameworks for resource allocation.
I disagree. Central planning is extremely vulnerable to corruption, mutualism is extremely vulnerable to corruption, barter is extremely vulnerable to corruption, none of the alternatives listed prevent black market currencies, which are extremely vulnerable to corruption. Yes, money has flaws, but if none of the available alternatives are less flawed, then disposing of money accomplishes nothing of importance.
The effort still required to make any alternative viable cannot be trivialized. The flaws of alternatives cannot be trivialized. It's not enough to have an idea, that idea actually has to work in the real world. I have the same goal as your, but trivializing the difficulties involved does not help.
We have to decide we want to do it before we can figure out how to do it. If we allow the current trend to continue, we'll never get the opportunity to try out any of those alternatives. There is a definitive plan to live in a stateless classless moneyless society, it's called socialism. It has an express goal of moving beyond a moneyed system. Focusing on how long and complicated the path could be is a great way to keep people disinterested in making any change whatsoever. I'm not saying you need to hide that part of it, but the way to inspire change is by keeping focus on what the goal is, and making it seem like it's possible because it is.
Also it's very easy to just say "____ is extremely vulnerable to corruption" to dismiss the whole idea, but you're also just doing the same generalization I did but in a negative direction. Well money is extremely vulnerable to corruption and we have more evidence of that than most any other system.
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We have to decide we want to do it before we can figure out how to do it. If we allow the current trend to continue, we'll never get the opportunity to try out any of those alternatives. There is a definitive plan to live in a stateless classless moneyless society, it's called socialism. It has an express goal of moving beyond a moneyed system. Focusing on how long and complicated the path could be is a great way to keep people disinterested in making any change whatsoever. I'm not saying you need to hide that part of it, but the way to inspire change is by keeping focus on what the goal is, and making it seem like it's possible because it is.
Also it's very easy to just say "____ is extremely vulnerable to corruption" to dismiss the whole idea, but you're also just doing the same generalization I did but in a negative direction. Well money is extremely vulnerable to corruption and we have more evidence of that than most any other system.
We have to decide we want to do it before we can figure out how to do it.
Agreed. But that's "should" language, not "can" language.
There is a definitive plan to live in a stateless classless moneyless society, it's called socialism.
The last time something called socialism got widespread, it too succumbed to horrible corruption.
Focusing on how long and complicated the path could be is a great way to keep people disinterested in making any change whatsoever.
Ignoring how long and complicated the path to aircraft could be is a great way to get people jumping off buildings with cardboard wings.
I'm not saying you need to hide that part of it, but the way to inspire change is by keeping focus on what the goal is, and making it seem like it's possible because it is.
The Incan economy isn't going to painlessly scale to a globalized society. Pretending that it's a rational alternative just makes you look foolish, which does more to hinder progress than soberly acknowledging the difficulty of the problem.
money is extremely vulnerable to corruption
Yes. Every system of resource and labor allocation is vulnerable to corruption. Some people are greedy, and no matter what system you devise to allocate resources and labor duties, some people will figure out how to manipulate it for personal advantage.
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With modern drones and AI tech?
I was just yesterday talking to someone about how AI drones, specifically exactly AI drones, will be a pivotal piece of technology in a way I think even beyond nukes in some sense. With a decent AI drone swarm, it's not hard to imagine a SINGLE person dominating an entire population. The dictator's purest dream - none of those pesky military generals getting uppity.
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3000 billionaires because you can't convince everybody to ditch school. You can't change people. Pharaoh, Hammurabi. Those are thousands of years of genetic obedience.
I don't know if I like assuming that obedience is a genetically heritable trait. I've heard racists use this assumption to argue that racially Chinese people are more likely to be sneaky servile backstabbers because that's what their genetics are selected for due to their political past.
Controversial statement incoming: I also don't want to preemptively rule out the possibility of obedience, or anything else, being genetically heritable - even if it could lead to these uncomfortable conclusions. I think scientific studies should be done about such things to answer the questions of whether these personality traits are heritable, come what may of that knowledge. But to my relief, from the studies I've seen, personality traits heritability is on very shaky ground in most cases.
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We have to decide we want to do it before we can figure out how to do it.
Agreed. But that's "should" language, not "can" language.
There is a definitive plan to live in a stateless classless moneyless society, it's called socialism.
The last time something called socialism got widespread, it too succumbed to horrible corruption.
Focusing on how long and complicated the path could be is a great way to keep people disinterested in making any change whatsoever.
Ignoring how long and complicated the path to aircraft could be is a great way to get people jumping off buildings with cardboard wings.
I'm not saying you need to hide that part of it, but the way to inspire change is by keeping focus on what the goal is, and making it seem like it's possible because it is.
The Incan economy isn't going to painlessly scale to a globalized society. Pretending that it's a rational alternative just makes you look foolish, which does more to hinder progress than soberly acknowledging the difficulty of the problem.
money is extremely vulnerable to corruption
Yes. Every system of resource and labor allocation is vulnerable to corruption. Some people are greedy, and no matter what system you devise to allocate resources and labor duties, some people will figure out how to manipulate it for personal advantage.
You claim to want the same outcomes as me, but your method of naysaying and picking at every detail will mostly lead to people disengaging with the conversation entirely. That's actively harmful to the movement's progress.
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Elaborate and explain
I belive the billionaires is currently winning
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I don't, I feel like moron / stupid just doesn't cut it for idiots like this. I honestly don't know of an adjective the fully encapsulates the stupidty, childishness, and naivite of a regular person aligning with the super rich.
Republican?
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You claim to want the same outcomes as me, but your method of naysaying and picking at every detail will mostly lead to people disengaging with the conversation entirely. That's actively harmful to the movement's progress.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Ignoring the most basic attention to detail is much worse than over-attention to detail. While they deserve consideration, optics are secondary to functionality. The most popular plan in the world is useless if it doesn't actually function.
Engagement is nothing without substance. You're putting the cart before the horse.
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I was just yesterday talking to someone about how AI drones, specifically exactly AI drones, will be a pivotal piece of technology in a way I think even beyond nukes in some sense. With a decent AI drone swarm, it's not hard to imagine a SINGLE person dominating an entire population. The dictator's purest dream - none of those pesky military generals getting uppity.
The most successful method the wealthy have used to subvert social movements is infiltration. When a drone swarm can do that, then drone swarms will be what I worry about.
